Over 70 other tribal elders receive death threats, U.S. Congressman calls on death penalty for leaker Manning

It's been a nightmarish last few months for U.S. Military officials. First they discovered that a young soldier serving in Iraq had acted as a spy passing documents to the site Wikileaks. Then they endured Wikileaksrelease of 90,000 U.S. Military documents -- many of them classified -- detailing their operations in Afghanistan.

The Taliban, a radical Islamic militia in Afghanistan, announced its gratitude to Wikileaks for the release and vowed to hunt down those revealed in the documents to be collaborating with the U.S. It appears that they have now made good on that threat.

Khalifa Abdullah, a tribal elder, was removed from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province’s embattled Arghandab district, by gunmen. He was then executed.

At the same time, 70 other tribal elders received death threats warning them that the Taliban had obtained reason to believe they were collaborating with the U.S. One such threat is signed by Abdul Rauf Khadim, a senior Taliban official who was imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. When the Cuban prison was partially shut down by President Obama Khadim was transferred to Afghan custody in Kabul, where he subsequently escaped.

The note reads:

We have made a decision for your death. You have five days to leave Afghan soil. If you don’t, you don’t have the right to complain.

NewsWeek first reported on the murder. They report that the Taliban believes the documents showed it U.S. sources, including the murder victim, Abdullah -- whether or not they truly do.Wikileaks founder and convicted Australian computer criminal Julian Assange claimed in a TIMEinterview that the leak was justified in the name of transparency. He assured that no one would be harmed by the leak, stating:

We feel confident. The material is seven months old; we reviewed it extensively. We held back 15,000 documents that we felt needed further review because the type of classifications they had. We've been publishing for four years a range of material that has caused the changing of constitutions and the removal of governments, but there's never been a case that we are aware of that has resulted in the personal injury of anyone.

In related news, U.S. Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) has called on the U.S. Military to pursue the death penalty in the Manning case. He says Manning's actions constitute treason in a time of war and thus should be punishable by death. His statements came in an interview, which is preserved here in an audio recording.

We spoke with key government witness Adrian Lamo, who turned Manning in, about Rogers' remarks. He tells us he doubts the U.S. government would pursue the death penalty given that they didn't in the case of Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent-turned-Russian spy. Lamo states, "The damage done by Bradley Manning doesn't begin to approximate the damage Robert Hanssen did."

Hanssen received a life sentence, which he is currently serving.

If the government were to pursue such a sentence, though, Lamo says he would refuse to testify.

He states,"I elected to turn Manning in, in the hopes of saving lives. I'm not going to participate in a process that's going to take a life. There should be no other blood spilled by Wikileaks."

He concludes, "Under any other circumstances I will testify in the case. [But] my concern for human life comes first."

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Here's your problem. Unlike you I actually spent more than 10 minutes looking at it and I see links to Monar getting help from the US. Looks like they had a big medical clinic put on etc. Obviously the tribal elders allowed it.

Khalifa (may not be the same person) is mentioned in a section about winning local support, and areas that are fully trafficable (aka locals not resisting)

Anyone who thinks this release of info will not get people killed should actually look at the data, it totally points people out.

This release will get Afghan locals assassinated, for certain. We will likely loose the local support we had, which was the only way out. So now we're either stuck there longer, or we'll leave and the country will be in conflict and a heaven for terrorists for many many years to come. This release was probably the most effective way to LOSE the war. It is really effective in stirring up chaos.

Unlike you I actually spent more than 10 minutes looking at it and I see links to Monar getting help from the US. Looks like they had a big medical clinic put on etc. Obviously the tribal elders allowed it.

I saw that report on my first pass and determined that this was not the case and in any event was something that the Taliban and insurgency must have known about for years. It was not a "big clinic", it was a visit from a group of mobile doctors in 2007, probably only for a single day. People in Afghanistan do not need the permission of their elders to seek aid from a group of doctors who pull up in trucks next to their village, and the trucks do not require permission to park there.

Many villages in Afghanistan have been visited by a PRT on more than one occasion. Everybody knew where they were; the US actively announces their activities for propaganda reasons. This was never a secret and most certainly could not be construed as any reason for assassinating people. Even the Taliban do not have a problem with people being treated by doctors.

Khalifa (may not be the same person) is mentioned in a section about winning local support, and areas that are fully trafficable (aka locals not resisting)

I could not find that report. Khalifa is a title, it means something like "leader" (bad translation). Feel free to link to whatever one it was, but I'm pretty sure you have the wrong place, since I've checked everything in that area and it wasn't any of them.